Thursday, August 12, 2010

Another Pointless Public Sector Job

The latest in myy series of pointless jobs in the public sector comes from the soon to be abolished Financial Services Authority. Here's a link to the FSA website, advertising a role as an HR diversity consultant for up to £60k a year.

"In order to ensure that the FSA complies with its external diversity obligations and internal aspirations to become an employer of choice and a more effective regulator."

I suppose they didn't get the memo that the FSA is not going to be an employer for much longer...

According to figures from law firm Reynolds Porter Chamberlain, FSA staff resignations have more than doubled since the Coalition government came to power. Since the first three months of 2009, resignations from the embattled regulator have increased almost fivefold, from 24 to 121. In fact, so far this year, 183 people have resigned from the FSA – which is more than the total number of resignations for 2009. A rats/sinking ship scenario, clearly.

Perhaps this Diversity Consultant is a good example of why the FSA is a failed organisation and is being wound up. Who on earth would want to apply for a job which soon won't exist anyway?

Iain, I'm sure you must have heard, but George Osborne wants to turn the FSA into two new quangos. That means two new HR departments. Two new employers who are required to comply with equalities and diversity legislation all with some juicy TUPE transfers.

Also, the FSA is the only part of the tripartite system that has changed its behaviour since the credit crunch. The BoE and the Treasury missed the crunch as much as the FSA, but you can't get rid of one of them. It's a good job St Vince of Cable is sat at the Cabinet table to forsee the next one(!)

So, it's time to reshuffle the deckchairs, fleece the taxpayer for millions and build up two massive new quangos to do the job of one, which has actually been recognised as doing a rather effective job these days.

Isn't that the sort of non-job that Oona King does?, you know the person you interviewed on LBC last night.

In defence, these people are recruited because organisations, particularly in the public sector, are required to monitor and produce reports and meet targets set by central government.Don't knock it until you take away the demand by reforming statute law.

Jamies's right, of course, but what a blessing the mass resignations must be under TUPE.

The other point is that most private sector organisations manage to comply with the regulations without having a specific "Equality and Diversity Managers", and it shouldn't be impossible for organisations like the FSA to draw on a central resource for their HR and Financial functions. It just needs someone to stop them empire building and to concentrate on their primary function.

Perhaps if they did shed some of their more esoteric activities, it would make them better at fulfilling their main remit.

Doesn't Oona King have the same sort on non-job, you remember her don't you? she was on your LBC show last night.

'Til central government do away with the need to report and monitor ethnic diversity, then organisations will need to employ such people, particularly within the public sector, where targets are set. This sort of job, with the targetted diversity demands placed upon employers, was typical of the left in its endless search for "equality" and pandering to ethnic minorities.

Here is another example of an area that should be subject to scrutiny prior to disposal in the great bonfire.Ethnic minorities that do not want to adopt, adapt and assimilate should not be pandered to with these diversity targets. As for other areas of life, why should any particular group be singled out for special attention. Yet another example of the "divide and rule" attitudes of the left.

As the FSA are paid for by the financial services industry you can imagine my joy at the featherbedding they provide for themselves when I get my FSA levy to pay each year for my retail business.

Regulation now accounts for 20% of our overhead cost all of which our customers pick up in the end. Half of that is beneficial to clients, the rest is enforced goldbricking.

Perhaps the Government might also address the 'flaw' in the Financial Services and Markets Act which allows the Financial Services Ombudsman to ignore the Long Stop liability rules which apply to every other business and activity in the country. But not financial services, where owners and advisers can be hounded forever without time limit with new interpretations of past regulatory regimes. Dying doesn't get you off the hook either, your estate can also be attacked. Perhaps the FSA should consider whether it is right to ignore the protection afforded by law to all other professional advisers, before getting their nickers in a twist over diversity.

The FSA have not promoted affordable access to financial advice, instead they have achieved the reverse whilst all the time allowing the biggest players, the Banks, a free run at the casino.

I would gladly support an outplacement director to assist them with finding new careers when they get canned.

Diversity is a spoils system that pretends it is an equality system. Since a true equality based system, merit, won't produce the desired spoils effect (equal distribution of rewards across races for differential performance -- high performers of certain races must lose the benefits of their objectively measured successes, usually academic, to lesser talented persons of other races), an artificial system, diversity allocation, had to be enabled. Since the raison d'etre of these systems, spoils, is obvious to everyone, diversity counselors were invented to browbeat the observant of the reward losing race into silent compliance. Some public benefit that.

Organisations have to guard themselves against falling foul of such laws.

In that sense such posts/jobs are not pointless but very relevant. Otherwise thsoe same organisations could fall victim to massive compensation payments.

Your ire sbe redireceted to the originating equality legislation. Is the Cameron govt brave enough to phase such legislation out or will they be too cowardly, fearing the usual charge of homophobea or racism? My money is on the latter.

The mind utterly boggles. Of course the job in question has been shut down as a result of your mention of it, but there are SIXTY-ONE vacancies advertised at the FSA on this site at the moment. Obviously everyone is leaving the FSA because they know it is being shut down; so what the BLOODY HELL are they doing trying to fill SIXTY-ONE imaginary vacancies? Don't they know there's a war on?